


One Step Closer

by Mipeltaja



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 04:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5571710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mipeltaja/pseuds/Mipeltaja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In hindsight, it should probably have been obvious that there was much that their plan of “get to Draenor, attain glory” didn’t really cover. But there’s no turning back now; Asric and Jadaar are just going to have to make it work.</p><p>Even if it means having to deal with bloodthirsty Arakkoa, prejudice from the Alliance and the Horde alike, and the complicated nature of their relationship with one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At times, Jadaar found himself wondering if it was possible that he was under some kind of a curse. Recent history, at least, would seem to suggest as much. It wasn’t that _all_ of his plans went awry, but it did seem to him that he encountered entirely unreasonable amounts of adversity even in what should by all rights have been straightforward affairs.

Take this latest venture for an example: here he was, decades in the past, on a world that had not yet shattered - a world he had once called home - and he was able and more than willing to lend his skills and knowledge to its defense. With all that, finding a place to make himself useful should have been laughably simple.

It hadn’t been.

Of course, he could have made it much easier for himself if he didn’t insist on travelling with a certain blood elf. But as irritating as the little dandy could be, his presence had become non-negotiable to Jadaar over the years. Just as it had been sentimentality that had brought him to this Draenor of the past, it was sentimentality that now tied him to Asric, and he would not apologize for either. He still wasn’t sure what had motivated Asric to come, but as he knew for a fact that it couldn’t have been concern for the planet or its people, Jadaar had a few theories. The problem was that he didn’t quite know how to test them. Matters of attraction had never been his strong suit - and that was without the added complication of not really knowing anything about how blood elves approached the subject, if they were serious.

As for their current quest for glory, the main problem they faced was that the Horde and the Alliance were both running their own separate operations against the Iron Horde, with little to no overlap, and those locals that were ready to oppose Hellscream had already aligned themselves with one or the other. It left very little demand for the pair of them, neutral though they were about the ongoing enmity between the two factions. No matter how loudly or frequently they both swore that Asric was no more a Horde spy than he, Jadaar, was secretly out for orc blood, it didn’t do them any good. Everyone was either too suspicious of one or both of them to let them in, or, as one hapless sergeant had nervously explained, unwilling to take the risk that someone else would be suspicious enough to start trouble. Not an entirely unfounded concern, to be fair.

While Jadaar, of course, always had the option of trying to blend in with the locals, the same could not be said for Asric. Though the resident draenei of this time had no reason to dislike Asric's kind, Alliance forces were widespread enough that even local villages were about as welcoming to a blood elf as the Alliance outposts had been. Again, Jadaar’s attempts to vouch for his companion had fallen on deaf ears.

It had been something of a relief, therefore, to hear the news of Lady Liadrin offering her aid to the Auchenai. They had both agreed that this made Auchindoun the most likely place to accept both of them, and so their next destination had been decided.

They’d met the draenei travellers upon entering Talador. The group, bound for the city of Aruuna, had been travelling on foot, with two talbuk-drawn carts to carry their collective belongings. Reasoning that there was safety in numbers - and that such safety would be welcome since the roads had grown more perilous - the refugees had agreed to allow the two strangers to join them on their way. Jadaar and Asric planned to travel with the company as far as the outskirts of Aruuna, then part ways and continue on to Auchindoun by themselves.

At least, such had been the plan. But really, Jadaar should’ve known better by now than to think fate would be so kind to him.

It started with a gasp from a young man whose name Jadaar believed to be Mekeda.

“Smoke!” he shouted. “There’s smoke on the horizon! Look!”

Jadaar leaned towards Asric to provide a quick translation, but kept his eye on the pillar of smoke rising from the east.

“Aruuna?” Asric asked.

“Most likely.” Jadaar touched his fingers to the hilt of the mace on his back. “We may have run into trouble.” 

As if on cue, someone at the front of the caravan shrieked “Arakkoa!” Jadaar barely had time to ready his weapon before the creature descended upon them, wings spread and sunlight glinting off its elaborate armor. It landed on all fours atop the front cart, and with its wing-feathers fanned out and one hind talon digging grooves into the wood frame, managed to look more like a battle-armored beast than the dangerously intelligent creature Jadaar knew it to be. Paying no mind to the terrified refugees who were slowly backing away from it, the arakkoa tore into the canvas covering of the cart, eager to get at the items inside. It didn’t even look up when a few of the refugees took off running.

It may have been unkind of him, but Jadaar couldn’t say he’d missed this variety of arakkoa after Draenor’s destruction had wiped them all out. He tightened his grip on his weapon, but otherwise made no move. From the corner of his eye, he saw Asric widen his stance by a fraction and slowly slide one hand under his traveling cloak, which Jadaar knew concealed an extremely sharp dagger. Jadaar shook his head in warning. _Not yet_. There was no point in needlessly escalating the situation if the arakkoa wasn’t going to attack anyone unprovoked, and he didn’t want Asric presenting himself as a target should the arakkoa unexpectedly change its mind. Asric gave him a puzzled look, but withdrew his hand.

Those of the travellers that hadn’t yet fled packed close together around the second cart, whispering nervously amongst themselves. If they had thought they’d be safer that way, they were proven wrong when another arakkoa, this one clad much less extravagantly in a loincloth and simple cloth wraps, came swooping down. With one precise slash of a chakram, it felled the person nearest to it before pouncing onto a terrified woman and pinning her to the ground. The remaining refugees ran then, leaving the poor woman to her fate. The bloodied edge of the weapon glittered in the sun as the arakkoa raised it again.

Jadaar decided he had to act. He charged at the creature and swung his mace with all the might he was able to muster. The arakkoa caught the movement from the corner of its eye and tried to dodge, but the blow still connected, catching it in its ribs and knocking it well away from its intended victim. The terrified refugee scrambled to take shelter under one of the carts. Jadaar spared a quick glance in the direction of the first arakkoa, but it was still preoccupied with its ransacking.

Satisfied that the creature was suitably distracted, Jadaar hefted his mace again and approached its injured accomplice to deliver the finishing blow, but far from defeated, the arakkoa sprang back so fast that he had no time to react. It flung itself at Jadaar with blind rage, and with enough force that both of his hooves left the ground. For a moment, he felt a piercing pain in his side, but on landing the back of his head collided with something so hard that it eclipsed all other sensations. As his vision blurred, he saw Asric throw off his cloak and rush forward, dagger in hand, and then the world slipped away from him altogether.

-

When he came to, it was strangely quiet. No sounds of battle or the shaken aftermath of one carried to his ears - not even leaves rustling in the wind. There was something soft under his head and a strange weight on his chest. His head hurt, and his eye felt like it had been glued shut. His other eye - the one he didn’t have - was throbbing, as it sometimes did when he overexerted himself. This phantom pain was a shadow of the raw agony he’d felt when he’d lost the eye however, and so he’d long since learnt to ignore it.

Careful flexing of his fingers revealed a slight soreness in the base of his right thumb, where he’d rested the hilt of his mace as he’d struck the arakkoa. His grip must’ve been off to leave an injury like that. Otherwise, both his arms seemed fine - and alarmingly devoid of clothing or armor - as did his legs when he shifted them cautiously, though the movement did send out a wave of dull pain from just above his hip.

When he finally managed to open his eye, he found himself staring at ceiling beams. To his left stood a wooden wall, and he could sense an open space on his blind side. He was trying to decide if it would be worth it to try to turn his head or if he was better off pretending to still be unconscious when he heard movement on his right.

“Oh, thank the Light!” a voice said, and a familiar face appeared in his field of vision. “The healing is taking.”

It was her. The woman he’d saved from the attacking arakkoa. Did this mean they were safe?

“Where are we?” Jadaar asked. His tongue felt heavy and dry, and somehow too big in his mouth.

“An outpost of the outlanders. They called it Fort Wrynn.”

Jadaar exhaled in relief. So they _were_ safe. And now that he’d had a moment to make sense of his surroundings, he saw that the room they were in was likely that of an inn, furnished with only a desk, a chair, and the bed he was lying on. The softness under his head was a pillow, and the weight…he pushed himself up a little, though the movement was not entirely painless, and saw that it was a totem, laid across his bare chest, just above tightly-wrapped bandages that covered his abdomen. He assumed it was the source of the healing the woman had referred to. He also assumed it wasn’t hers. To his knowledge, there were no shamans among the draenei of this time, and in any case the thing had a distinctly dwarven look to it.

“Who…”

“There was a little bearded man here earlier, when they brought us in,” the woman explained. “He said he wasn’t really a healer, but he left the totem and told me that combined with my Gift, it might be enough. I’m glad to see he was right. You’ve been unconscious for hours, and for a while I thought you might not make it.”

 _Hours?_ “I hit my head that hard?”

“Your head?” she said, almost laughing, but soon sobered. “Your head was the least of your worries! The arakkoa tore your side open. You would have bled out for sure had help not arrived when it did.”

“Help?”

“A scouting party. Someone had seen the smoke and they’d been sent out to investigate. It was sheer luck they found us.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d died on me. You saved my life.”

“And now you’ve saved mine. You’re not indebted to me.” Jadaar wouldn’t have considered it a debt to begin with, but something about the way she’d said it had him thinking that maybe she had. “I’m sorry, but I can’t recall your name.”

“Tavara.”

“Thank you, Tavara.”

It was good to have all that settled, and Jadaar felt most reassured until Tavara’s earlier words finally registered. “Hold on, did you say Fort Wrynn? But that means it’s an Alliance base! They let Asric in?”

Tavara’s expression turned glum, and she looked away.

“I don’t know how much you remember of the attack, but when the arakkoa came after you and knocked you out, your friend… he had a dagger, and he attacked the arakkoa. If - if he hadn’t, I feel like you would have been beyond help, like poor Mekeda was. It’s possible I wouldn’t be here, either.” She swallowed, and blinked hard for a few moments before continuing.

“But then the other one - got angry, I think. It grabbed him and flew away.”

She did not say what she probably assumed Jadaar, being a draenei, already knew: if one of the flying arakkoa had taken Asric, then he was most likely dead, or would be soon. The Outcasts were known to sometimes take other races prisoner for reasons that were often known only to them, but their unbroken brethren, never. Non-arakkoa weren’t interesting or important to them, and if they did not kill you right away, it only meant they wanted to make you suffer first.

So that was it. He’d lost Asric. Worse than that, he’d brought Asric to this world to die. It had been Jadaar’s idea to come to Draenor, his whim, and Asric had only accompanied him - because of what? Habit? Lack of other options? A genuine preference for Jadaar’s company? He didn’t know. He’d been too unsure to ask, and now it was too late. He put a hand over his good eye, angry and ashamed. What had he been so afraid of?

Tavara placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her sympathy provided little comfort, but Jadaar allowed it. She was not to blame for his loss. 

“Aruuna lies in ruins,” she said. “I have nowhere left to run, but Sergeant Vitasipe has offered to put in a good word for me to her commander in Shadowmoon Valley.” She indicated the Alliance tabard Jadaar only now noticed she was wearing, then hesitated. "If - I don't mean to sound callous, but if you need a new purpose too, I’m sure she’ll be willing to help."

Jadaar said nothing. It was true that he no longer had any reason not to throw his lot in with the Alliance, but at the moment he was finding it hard to remember why he’d wanted to come to Draenor in the first place. What he wanted to do right now was to go back to Shattrath, _his_ Shattrath, find a reasonably dry spot in the Lower City to curl up in, and sleep until such time that he no longer felt like there was a curse hanging over his head. Alternatively, he wanted to storm the Spires of Arakk, to hunt the arakkoa there until he found the one that had taken Asric - an impossible task, he knew, and not just because he couldn’t reliably tell one arakkoa from another - or, as was far more likely, die trying.

His silence seemed to be making Tavara uncomfortable.

“I apologize,” she said. “I barely knew any of the people I was travelling with, but the two of you… you were close, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Jadaar said, slowly. For his own part, he had been _very_ fond of the irritating brat of an elf, and he supposed Asric wouldn’t have have stuck around all this time if at least some of that sentiment hadn’t been returned.

Tavara removed her hand. “I really shouldn’t have dropped all of this on you right now, when you should be resting. It would be best if you went back to sleep and let the totem finish its work.”

Jadaar rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know if I _can_ sleep,” he said. “This is a lot to take in.”

She gave him a sympathetic look. “I may not be much good for emotional comfort,” she said, “but sleep - that I can do. Wait here.”

Seeming pleased to have a task she was confident she could perform, Tavara left the room with a newfound air of determination, and returned shortly with a satchel slung over one shoulder and a small bowl and a mortar and pestle in her hands. She set these on the desk and pulled a handful of herbs from the satchel. From his position on the bed, Jadaar couldn’t see which herbs she chose or what she did with them, but when she turned around she held out a bowl of something that put Jadaar in mind of the sludge that tended to collect in stagnant pools near goblin settlements. Still, she assured him that it would help, so he accepted the bowl and drank.

If he'd thought the appearance vile, the taste was even worse. He barely managed to get it down without gagging, and even then it took a few moments of intense concentration to _keep_ it down. But once the nausea passed, his eyelid did indeed grow heavy and a languid warmth began to settle over him and seep into his limbs. As Jadaar laid back down, Tavara collected her equipment and bid him goodnight. Jadaar barely heard the door closing after her.

As promised, the concoction did help him fall asleep, but his dreams, when they came, were less pleasant than he might have hoped. He had troubling impressions of a shadowy army in pursuit - distant, but tireless - and of burning skies and crumbling stone. It was Auchindoun and it was Shattrath, and he ran without moving forward. The shadows marched on in the distance, neither gaining on him, nor falling behind, but there was something else here, too, and much closer. He could hear sharp claws scratching at the other side of every wall he stopped at. Whatever beast was stalking him, it would surely find a way through eventually, or else make its own opening.

Another scrape of the unseen creature’s talons, and the world shifted, rippled like water, and the flames began to melt away. The shadow army faded as well - but the Creature persisted.

Jadaar opened his eye and saw darkness. For a moment he was unsure of where he was, but then the shadows of the night resolved themselves into the same room he’d fallen asleep in, just darker. He blinked. Despite the unsettling dream, his head felt clearer, his limbs less heavy than before. His musings were interrupted by the sudden realization that he could still hear the scraping noise that he had in his dream taken for the claws of some unspeakable beast, and that it was coming from the direction of the room’s only window. Awake, he knew it was extremely unlikely that any hunting animal would be trying to climb in through his window, but other intruders were not out of the question.

Jadaar turned to face the wall, so that if someone did come in they couldn’t immediately tell he was awake. He stared instead at the wood paneling, where the moonlight shining in through the window cast a pale rectangle. In the middle of it, he thought he could see the suggestion of a shimmering shadow. The window creaked open and a cool breeze rolled in, accompanied by the soft padding of careful footsteps. Jadaar kept his eye on the patch of moonlight. It was probably an effect of the nightmare that his heart was beating so hard against his ribs and every muscle in his body felt tense, prepared to act. Hoping to, even.

The shadow grew sharper with every footstep as his uninvited visitor approached the bed, and at last he could hear the shaky breath of someone trying to make as little noise as possible. Jadaar took a deep breath of his own, and whirled around, reaching out with one hand. He pulled the figure down onto the mattress and rolled on top of it with one hand resting on his would-be assailant’s neck, the threat of impending asphyxiation communicated clearly where his fingers dug ever so slightly into the soft flesh. The sudden movement made him feel somewhat light-headed, but the wound in his side only put up a token protest.

The figure was slightly translucent - likely the lingering effect of a fading invisibility spell - which combined with the darkness made it hard to tell what manner of a creature had tried to sneak up on him. It was too small and lithe to be an orc, so at least it was unlikely to be an agent of the Iron Horde, and the lack of fur or feathers ruled out both arakkoa and saberon.

“There had better be a good explanation for this intrusion,” Jadaar growled, hoping that the ‘big scary mountain of muscle’ act would work as well here as it had on the few occasions that he’d fallen back on it during his time as a peacekeeper. “Start talking.”

Instead of trembling in fear as it rightfully should have, the figure heaved an enormous sigh. “I never would have thought I’d be this happy to be threatened with strangulation.” A pair of fel-green eyes looked up at him. “Though I should tell you, you don’t sound half as scary as you probably think you do.”

Jadaar could scarcely believe it, but there was no mistaking that smug voice. He’d been listening to it day in and day out for long enough.

“Asric?”


	2. Chapter 2

Asric had known from the start that coming to Draenor couldn’t possibly be a good idea; it never was. This time it was made even worse by the fact that there had been no pressing need to step through the portal, no army nipping at his heels - quite the opposite, in fact, since on this occasion the enemy’s forces were waiting on the other side of the portal. Who in their right mind would voluntarily go towards that?

Much to Asric’s chagrin, the answer to that question had turned out to be ”Jadaar” - though truly, he wasn’t sure the big blue windbag was entirely in his right mind. If nothing else, Asric could say with absolute certainty that he himself wasn’t. After all, he’d followed Jadaar here, had he not? And unlike Jadaar, who was motivated by a desire to help both this world and any others that might be under threat from the Iron horde, Asric had only come because he hadn’t wanted to let Jadaar go alone. 

It was stupid. He was stupid.

Especially since, in hindsight, letting Jadaar go without him might have been the better option. Alone, Jadaar could have enlisted at the first Alliance camp he came across, and he’d have been fighting the Iron Horde within the first day. Probably. With Asric in tow, it wasn’t so simple. In fact, it was complicated enough that Asric was genuinely surprised Jadaar hadn’t decided to cut his losses and end their association yet. For his own part, Asric had no intention of leaving without being explicitly told to do so, even if he was making Jadaar’s life more difficult by insisting on tagging along. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but then he’d never claimed to be a particularly magnanimous person.

At least now, after several days of aimless wandering, they finally had a set destination in Auchindoun, where, so they’d heard, blood elves and draenei had allied to defend the draenei city of the dead. If there was a place to be found on this light-forsaken world that would welcome both of them, Auchindoun had to be it. Aside from all of that, Asric was rather curious to see the place whole - as opposed to the crumbling ruin that could, on a clear day, be seen looming in the distance from Scryer’s Tier in Shattrath.

It had felt promising that the group of draenei they’d met on the road hadn’t been averse to allowing a blood elf to travel with them. The journey through Talador had been pleasantly uneventful, and he had almost started to enjoy the scenery - really quite lovely, and such a far cry from the gloom of Terokkar Forest - when one of the draenei let out a loud gasp, followed by several agitated words in his native tongue.

“Smoke,” Jadaar helpfully supplied in Common. “Over there, past the trees.” He pointed east, where a thick black column was indeed rising skywards.

“Aruuna?” Asric asked. The frightened chatter of the other draenei certainly seemed to suggest as much.

“Most likely.” Jadaar’s tone was grim, and his hand drifted to the hilt of his mace. “We may have run into trouble.”

In the next moment, there was a shriek of “Arakkoa!” from the front cart. That, at least, Asric understood without translation - which was just as well, since none was forthcoming. Jadaar hefted his mace in both hands, and Asric scanned the landscape for the familiar hunched silhouettes of the bird-men. To his bewilderment, he saw none.

He soon found out why, as the first attacker descended upon their small caravan from above. It landed on one of the carts with enough force to rattle its contents, prompting several of the draenei to flee.

The creature, though humanoid and undeniably birdlike in its appearance, was nothing like any arakkoa Asric had ever seen. The ones back in Outland had been squat and flightless things, with an awkward, uneven gait, but this one had long, powerful limbs that ended in truly vicious-looking talons, and its meticulously preened wings, at the moment fanned out in colourful arcs, looked anything but useless. With its forelimbs it began to slash and tear at the canvas covering the cart. Asric reached under his travelling cloak for the dagger concealed there, but Jadaar caught his eye and shook his head. _Don’t_. Normally, Asric might have disregarded the warning and done as he pleased, but Jadaar’s knowledge of this world and its inhabitants far outstripped his. Perhaps there was a good reason why he shouldn’t draw his weapon, even though Jadaar had readied his, and so Asric withdrew his hand, empty.

Somewhat belatedly, he realized that the fleeing draenei had not seemed to interest the arakkoa in the least. He was just about to suggest to Jadaar that they run for it, when a second bird-creature swooped down from the sky, effortlessly striking down one of the draenei huddled around the second cart before lunging at another, pinning her to the ground with its talons. The remaining travellers turned and ran then, and Asric would have, too, if not for Jadaar, who charged forward. With a single powerful swing, the arakkoa was knocked aside, and the frightened draenei woman dove under one of the carts.

 _Oh, so it’s okay when you do it_ , Asric thought as he watched the creature tumble sideways. Jadaar spared a quick glance at the other arakkoa - which appeared entirely engrossed in pilfering the travellers’ belongings - and approached the one he’d hit, only to be taken by surprise as the now angered arakkoa leapt at him, knocking him back against one of the carts. The draenei woman cowering under the cart shrieked, but Jadaar himself made no sound, his head lolling to the side.

Unwilling to stand idly by any longer, Asric pounced. He grabbed a fistful of the arakkoa’s head-feathers in one hand, and with the other, drove the point of his dagger into the side of its neck. It screamed, letting go of Jadaar to claw at the blade with both talon-hands, one of which was now dark blue with draenic blood. The sight made Asric’s own blood boil, and he would have gladly slit the creature’s throat then and there, but before he could do so, he was seized from behind by powerful talons and yanked up into the air. The first arakkoa had ceased its ransacking to come to its comrade’s aid.

Asric watched helplessly as the ground slipped away from him, along with Jadaar and the still living arakkoa, which spent a moment clawing at the dagger in panic, before pulling it out and pressing both its talon-hands over the wound. Asric noted with some alarm that Jadaar was not moving, and that there was a steadily growing blue stain on his tunic. Just as Asric thought all hope lost, he saw the draenei woman crawl out from under the cart, snatch up the dagger, and leap onto the arakkoa. With a fierce shout, she drew the blade across the feathered throat. Seeing the arakkoa fall limp to the ground, Asric felt intense gratitude toward the woman. At least this gave Jadaar a change to survive.

He held no such optimism for his own future; his weapon was lost, and although he was pretty sure he still had a small vial of poison in a pouch on his belt, he rather doubted he could persuade the arakkoa carrying him to drink it. And in any case they were too high up now for the fall to be survivable even if he did somehow manage to free himself from the creature’s grasp.

The arakkoa swept past the smoldering remains of a forest, pausing for a moment to circle pensively above some agitated wildlife, but ultimately turning away with a squawk that Asric swore carried a note of disappointment. Perhaps it had hoped to feed him to the beasts? Just how intelligent were these strange arakkoa, anyway? The ones in Outland had been downright wily, but to survive without this kind of brute strength at their disposal, they would’ve had to be. For all he knew, the Outland variety had been the result of some foul experiment of the orc warlocks.

Whether or not this particular individual had that kind of mental faculties, it did feel like it was up to something. Asric had initially assumed it was going to take him back to wherever it had come from, but what it was doing now - flying an erratic path between arbitrary points, changing direction suddenly and for no apparent reason - seemed like something else. Possibly it wanted revenge for its slain friend - even if _technically_ Asric hadn’t been the one to finish the kill - and was trying to think of a suitably cruel way of killing him. Asric could only guess. The arakkoa was now making for the high cliffs that lined this edge of Talador, gaining more altitude with each beat of its truly impressive wings, and Asric had never been prone to visions of the future, but now he could clearly picture himself becoming little more than a smear on the side of those same cliffs very soon.

His train of thought was interrupted by a sudden rush of blazing heat, which zoomed up out of nowhere and only narrowly missed him, but caught the arakkoa in its left wing. Shrieking in pain and surprise, the creature released its hold, and for the briefest of moments, Asric felt weightless. When he began the inevitable plummet to his death, he was able to take some small comfort in knowing that at least the arakkoa, unable to fly with only one functional wing, would share his fate. He squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of the impact and hoped his death would be swift enough that he wouldn’t feel much.

“Hup!”

To his puzzlement, the air rushing past him in a deafening gale slowed down to something more akin to a pleasant breeze. Somewhere to his left, he heard an unpleasant ‘crunch’ that was most likely the sound of the arakkoa hitting the ground, _hard_. He opened his eyes.

He was still in the air, not so much falling now as floating slowly downwards. Even so, he failed to get his feet under him in time and landed on the ground on his side - gently enough not to injure himself, but still entirely without grace.

Next to him stood a sin’dorei mage clad in Kirin Tor robes. With a flick of his hand, the man incinerated what remained of the arakkoa.

“Didn’t expect to see one of these so far north of the Spires,” he said, then turned to Asric. “Are you unhurt?”

“I - er, yes, I’m fine,” Asric managed, and scrambled to his feet. “Thank you.”

“Oh, it was nothing. I welcome any opportunity to set fire to things.” He inclined his head in a polite half-bow, which Asric returned more out of instinct than anything. “I am Magister Krelas.”

“Asric,” said Asric, already turning towards the road. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I really don’t have time for pleasantries. My friend was hurt and I need to get back.” He threw another hasty ‘thank you’ over his shoulder, and broke into a run.

The distance turned out to be much slower to cross on foot than it had been through the air. The road made a curve around the forest that added to its length, and the paving had been worn rough in spots, forcing Asric to slow down or risk twisting an ankle. But even with these obstacles, he estimated the return trip couldn’t have taken him more than half an hour on top of the maybe ten minutes the arakkoa had been carrying him. However, when the attack site at last came into sight, Asric found it empty but for the battered carts. There was no sign of the draenei woman or the other wounded draenei man anywhere - even the dead arakkoa was gone. Where he’d last seen Jadaar, he found only a patch of flattened grass, stained dark blue.

Asric suddenly found it hard to breathe, in a way that had nothing to do with being out of breath from the running. No. This was unacceptable. He’d only come to Draenor for Jadaar’s sake, and he’d be damned if he allowed something like this to separate them after everything they’d been through.

Fortunately, the scene was not entirely devoid of clues; the air was fairly crackling with the blue-pink tang of magic recently cast, so thick he could taste it. And while it was true that Asric was no mage, he _was_ still a blood elf. He’d grown up in Quel’Thalas, where arcane wonders were mundane and magic had been woven into everything - up to and including the people. None but the blue dragonflight knew magic like the sin’dorei knew magic. As such, he recognized a portal spell when he stumbled upon the fresh remains of one. It hung in the air all in a tangle, and all he needed to do was to find the end of the thread and pull until the path the spell had blazed through the Twisting Nether revealed itself.

That said, actually reconstructing the portal was beyond him. The best he could hope to do with his limited skill and even more limited education would be to pry it open just enough to catch a glimpse of the other side, and then, if he was very lucky, perhaps -

There was a low whistle from behind him. “What happened here?”

Asric very nearly released the spell from surprise; he hadn’t realized Krelas had followed him. The magister looked over the destruction coolly, taking in the trampled ground and the battered carts. Then his gaze fell on the blood on the ground.

“Draenei?” He gave Asric a sidelong look, then shook his head. “I don’t need to know.”

Asric said nothing. If the last few days had taught him anything, it was that his association with Jadaar was still met with raised eyebrows at best, and sometimes with outright hostility - even after the news of Lady Liadrin’s alliance with the Auchenai. The fact that Asric had been travelling with the draenei and not fighting them was unlikely to make the situation any better in Krelas’ eyes.

The thread of magic pulsed in his grasp, demanding his attention. He’d have to do something soon or the spell would be lost, and with it his only chance of finding out where Jadaar had been taken.

Krelas’ attention, too, was caught. “What have you got there?”

“A closed portal,” Asric answered truthfully, reasoning that he could hardly hope to hide magic from a magister.

“Well, why didn’t you say so!” Krelas extended a hand. “If I may?”

Reluctantly, Asric relinquished his hold and stood back. With a practiced touch, Krelas began to feed arcane energy back into the fading spell, and bit by bit, the portal started to reform. At first it was no more than a mere ripple in the air, but soon Asric could see high walls of stone and wood, and a big, looming building adorned with blue-gold banners - and that’s all he caught before the portal collapsed in on itself, blinking out of existence.

“Right, well. I’m afraid that is out of the question,” said Krelas.

“What? Why?”

Krelas jabbed a finger at the spot of thin air where the portal had been. “Did you not see the heraldry? That’s Alliance territory! Fort Wrynn, if I’m not entirely mistaken.“ he cleared his throat. “But then of course, I’ve never seen the inside of its walls before.”

“All right, but -”

“No. I simply cannot open a portal into an Alliance outpost. My standing with the Kirin Tor is hanging by a thread as it is.”

“They have my friend!”

At that, Krelas looked hesitant. “That is unfortunate,” he said at last, but made no move to recreate the portal.

Well, of course not, Asric thought. Why _should_ the magister risk his station for someone he’d just met and who to him seemed to have a bone to pick with the Alliance? Were he in Krelas’ position, Asric certainly wouldn’t see any reason to be sticking his own neck out.

“Listen,” Krelas said, softer this time, “I’m not supposed to condone sneaking into Alliance camps, but I can take you to Vol’jin’s Pride. If you should take advantage of its close proximity to Fort Wrynn, that’s hardly any of my business.”

Asric considered this. The Horde outpost was close enough that he could have walked the distance in under an hour, but he recognized the sentiment behind the offer: Krelas was sympathetic, even if he couldn’t afford to aid Asric directly.

“All right,” Asric said. “Thank you.”

Krelas gave a conspiratorial smile as he began to cast a new portal. “Just promise not to drag me into it if you get caught.”

-

Vol’jin’s Pride was bustling in the midday sun. Besides the official Horde forces stationed there, a steady stream of adventurers and other assorted fortune-seekers flowing in and out of the two entrances kept the place lively - and probably contributed to the fact that no one seemed to give the pair of blood elves portaling in a second thought. Krelas wished Asric luck in his endeavour one last time and then walked off with brisk steps, as though he was worried that he could be connected to Asric later, when whatever it was Asric was planning to do came to light.

Asric might have been insulted, but the truth of it was that he _did_ intend to sneak into an Alliance encampment, and if he got caught his true motivations wouldn’t matter; he would be taken for a spy or an assassin for certain, and dealt with accordingly.

Since the portal was not an option, he would have to find a more traditional way in - and that would take a little more time. Until dark at the very least, and most preferably past midnight so the majority of the base would be asleep. Asric would just have to hope Jadaar would still be there - and that was assuming he and the other draenei had really gone through the portal to Fort Wrynn. It was, after all, possible that more arakkoa had arrived and taken everyone while Asric had been gone, and the portal had just been some Alliance scout’s means of returning to the base to report the discovery of the ruined caravan.

Still, Fort Wrynn was his only lead, and so he had to follow it. In the meantime, he’d need to acquire some equipment for the task. Unfortunately for Asric, he had little money and even less to trade, which limited his options somewhat. _Fortunately_ for him, there seemed to be no shortage of adventurers in the place. They would be used to fulfilling requests - even odd ones - for relatively small rewards, and in his experience many didn’t care enough to ask questions.

His weapon was easy enough to replace. The first person he asked - a somewhat wobbly but surprisingly genial troll that had stumbled through the gates in torn robes - cheerfully rifled through her bulging backpack to produce a dagger that, according to her, had belonged to an Iron Horde orc that had tried to ambush her on the road. Asric paid a handful of silver for the blade and then cleaned it thoroughly in case it had at some point been coated in something unpleasant. He wouldn’t want to poison anyone if he had to use it - not without meaning to, at least.

The second item on his list - a length of rope - proved a little more difficult than anticipated. As it turned out, it wasn’t the kind of thing adventurers tended to just pick up on their travels. Asric couldn’t see why not, when they seemed to grab everything else they could carry, even parts of dead animals that they couldn’t possibly anticipate any use for. Still, he did eventually meet a tauren who offered him an actual grappling hook, sheepishly explaining that it had been an impulse purchase that had not been of much use to him after all, but perhaps the rope would be suitable for Asric’s needs? Were he not concentrating on not drawing undue attention, Asric might have jumped for joy.

Considering these successes, he found it downright ridiculous that the one item he just could not procure turned out to be a simple dark cloak. On the rare occasion that he happened to find anyone with a cloak to spare at all, it was always some bright, gaudy thing, sometimes with dangling decorations that made jingling sounds in motion. Hardly ideal for sneaking. He did find a tailor who offered to make him one, but the material fees alone were beyond his budget. Finally accepting that he was not going to get that cloak, Asric found himself a quiet corner in the inn where he could count his remaining coin and think about what alternatives might still be in his price range. He was sorely tempted to buy a drink to keep him company, but he could spare neither the silver nor his sobriety.

But the more Asric thought about his situation, the more hopeless it appeared. Attempting to sneak into a military base - even a small one like Fort Wrynn - was risky to begin with, and could be outright suicide if he couldn’t acquire the bare minimum of the necessary equipment. He could abandon this plan as folly, but then what would he do? He’d only come to this wretched world for Jadaar’s sake, both to keep an eye on the fool and to just… stay close to him. Without him, Asric had no reason to stay.

During his short stay in Vol’jin’s Pride, Asric had learnt that the Horde’s magi had managed to open portals back to the Azeroth of their own time. He could, in theory, find out where these portals were and leave Draenor to the people who wanted to fight for it, but he had no more reason to do that than he had to stay. What remained of Quel’Thalas was no longer for him, as he wanted no part in the ridiculousness between the Horde and the Alliance. The thought of continuing his lifestyle of the last few years held very little appeal, at least without Jadaar by his side - and just when had that happened, anyway? He’d been… fond of Jadaar for some time, it was true, and obviously that came with a certain level of concern for the windbag’s well-being, or he wouldn’t even be on this sad excuse for a planet in the first place. But liking a person’s company was one thing. _Requiring_ it for his own happiness was another. More incriminating still was the fact that he was currently contemplating a very ill-advised trip into a place where he was unwelcome, just on the off chance that he might find Jadaar there. Asric folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on them. He could not have picked a more inopportune time for this realization. And the worst part was, it only made him more determined to go through with his plan. He needed to get Jadaar back, at least for long enough to sort things out between them.

But he had little hope of achieving that if he couldn’t even get his hand on the necessary sneaking gear. What was he to do?

“Losing heart, pretty boy?”

Asric looked up to see a pair of Forsaken approaching him. The speaker, a woman in plain leathers, pulled a chair from an unoccupied table and seated herself across from Asric without waiting for invitation. She might have been grinning, but as her visage was more bare bone than face, it was hard to be certain. Her companion, who wore elaborate robes of blue and orange, as well as a strange hood that obscured his entire head, remained standing.

“Can I help you?” Asric said, a shade haughtier than was strictly necessary. He didn’t much like the look of these two, and didn’t care if they knew.

“Rebecka, you are frightening the poor elf,” the hooded man admonished. To Asric, he said, “We have been watching you.”

That… did not sound good. Asric glanced between the two of them, trying to decide if he was going to need to make a run for it. They didn’t _look_ official, and really, nothing he’d done so far was actually incriminating. Still, it was instinct for him to err on the side of caution in these matters.

“Oh, like you’re any better, you old creep,” said the woman - Rebecka, apparently - and smacked the man lightly on the arm. She turned to Asric, adopting a much sweeter tone. “Pay him no mind, he’s always like this.”

She glanced around with such an air of conspiracy that it was a wonder no one seemed to take notice, then leaned closer, motioning with one bony finger for Asric to do the same. “You seemed very insistent on that cloak, and I’m thinking you don’t want it for fashion. There’s something you don’t want to be seen doing, isn’t there?”

Asric tensed. “How did you -”

“Oh, I know a thing or two about not being seen, myself,” she said, preening slightly, “and I have excellent hearing. Rikhard?” The last part was addressed to her companion.

‘Rikhard’ stuck a withered hand in the folds of his robes and pulled out an oblong wooden box. Asric couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like the man might actually have been keeping it inside his ribcage. Oh, how he hated Forsaken.

Rikhard flipped the box open and turned it to face in Asric’s direction. Inside, there was an assortment of small vials, each filled with some kind of a potion and none of them labeled. Delicately, he plucked one from its place and presented it to Asric. The liquid inside was a pale shimmery blue that looked almost white when the light caught it just right. Asric quirked an eyebrow at the shrouded Forsaken.

“Invisibility potion,” said Rikhard.

Asric peered at the vial again. He’d used invisibility potions before, but in his experience they tended to be some shade of purple or even magenta. Light blue was a new one. “Local ingredients? Is it any good?”

“The best you’ll find this side of the Dark Portal,” said Rebecka, beaming. “If I do say so myself,” she added, and the eerie glow in one of her eye sockets flickered in what might have been a wink.

“And how much for a vial?”

“Let’s see, now,” said Rebecka, tapping pensively at her chin. “I believe the going rate these days is somewhere in the vicinity of thirty gold.”

Asric handed the vial back, suddenly afraid that he might drop and break it. “I don’t have that much on me.” He hadn’t even had that much on him entering the outpost; most of his and Jadaar’s money had been in the draenei’s possession, because Asric preferred not to walk around with more coin in his pocket than he intended to spend in one day.

Rikhard tucked the vial back in its place and after a moment’s hesitation picked up another one and turned to Rebecka.

“Well…” said she, as if considering an unvoiced suggestion. “We _do_ need to get rid of that.”

“What is that?” Asric asked, leaning closer for a better look.

Rebecka waved a hand dismissively. “A bad batch. It makes you only mostly invisible, and the effect only lasts about ten minutes.” She tapped a finger against her exposed molars, her gaze flicking back and forth between the potion and Asric, and ultimately settling on the potion. “Practically useless in broad daylight, of course... but if you were going to make do with a dark cloak, it should do the job just as well. Maybe even better.”

Asric had to admit she had a point there. It wasn’t ideal, but then nothing about the situation was. “And how much for that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Twenty silvers should cover the materials I wasted on it.”

Asric counted out the money and pushed it across the table. “Then I’ll take it.”

“Excellent!” said Rikhard, handing over the vial and pocketing the money in one fluid motion. “While we’re here, might I interest you in some jewelry? I’ve got a lovely selection of engagement rings here.” He patted at his breast, and Asric dearly hoped there was a concealed pocket there.

“Er, no thanks,” Asric said, gathering up his things and hurrying to stand up. “This will be all, thank you.” Tucking the vial he’d purchased into the pouch on his belt, he fled the inn as casually as he could manage.

As anxious as Asric was to get his plan underway now that he had what he needed, there was just no rushing the sun, and he couldn’t risk it during the day with a defective invisibility potion, of which he estimated he only had three and a half doses. There was nothing for him to do but to wait, and hope this would work, because if he couldn’t find Jadaar tonight, if the draenei was no longer in Fort Wrynn, or if he hadn’t even been taken there in the first place… well, Asric had no contingency plan, and no means to execute any even if he did have one. He was kind of putting all his eggs in one basket, here.

He spent the evening prowling the perimeter of Vol’jin’s Pride, trying to appear as though he was just keeping an eye out for the saberon that apparently plagued the area, surreptitiously watching the activity near Fort Wrynn. Like Vol’jin’s Pride, the traffic through the Alliance outpost seemed to be slowing down as the evening wore on, and by sundown everyone who came in or out did so on gryphonback. As far as he could tell, the entrance was being guarded, but they had not built walls where they’d assumed the rocky hills would shield their fort just as well. A lone nearly invisible elf could easily slip in and out unnoticed.

Confident that the pair of unnerving Forsaken would have cleared out by now, Asric returned to the inn in Vol’jin’s Pride to spend most of his remaining coin on a supper of hard cheese and frankly overpriced water. He hadn’t had a bite to eat since that morning, before all the excitement, and it wouldn’t do to collapse in the middle of his mission to unfriendly territory. That, and he needed something to occupy himself with for a while longer so he didn’t go rushing in too early.


	3. Chapter 3

The last hour before midnight was quite possibly the longest hour of his life, but at long last Vol’jin’s Pride had gone to sleep, and Asric thought it safe to assume the same would be true of Fort Wrynn. In his experience the two factions were very much alike when it came to the little things. He slung his grappling hook rope across his chest, tied the dagger to his belt, and slipped out. The Horde’s guards paid him no mind.

He walked along the road to a point where he was sure no one in either Vol’jin’s Pride or Fort Wrynn could see him, and took a swig of his invisibility potion. As expected, the effect was not complete, but it was much better than he would have expected for twenty silvers. He would be fine as long as he kept to the shadows and didn’t get too close to anyone. He allowed himself one last moment to consider the foolishness of his undertaking. Perhaps it was a little sad that he was willing to go to such lengths for someone who barely tolerated him - and would like him even less if the truth of what he had done in Shattrath ever came to light - but Asric couldn’t just walk away. As ever, his heart had little regard for reason.

He was up the hillside and inside the fort in a matter of minutes, with plenty of time to spare before the first dose would wear off. A handful of tents had been erected near the building Asric assumed to be the inn, and judging by the pieces of polished armor sitting outside most of them, he guessed these to be for the soldiers stationed at Fort Wrynn. Therefore the inn would likely be his best bet. He circled behind the building, peering in through the ground-level windows on his way, but the only bedroom on that floor looked very lived-in, meaning it probably belonged to the innkeeper. There was nothing for it, then; he would have to climb. He took a sip of his potion to ensure the effect would not wear off while he was hanging off the side of the building and uncoiled his grappling hook.

The clink of the hook landing on the roof was mercifully quiet, and after a couple of tugs to ensure it was firmly in place, Asric began to climb.

The very first window he peered into revealed a dark, sparsely furnished room. In one corner he could see a bed. On the bed, under a thin blanket, lay a large figure. Asric took out his knife and, sliding the blade between the window and the frame, pushed the latch aside. After that, the window opened easily on well-oiled hinges. How fortunate it was for him that every Alliance building on this miserable world was by necessity new! He sheathed his blade and swung himself in.

The figure on the bed hadn’t moved, which was a good thing if he had the wrong room, but slightly worrying if he didn’t. As he drew closer, he could see a pair of hooves sticking out from under the too short blanket. Definitely draenei, then, and male if the size was any indication, but by the sun, why was he so still? Asric had not forgotten the size of the bloodstain at the attack site. Maybe whoever had created that portal had been too late. Maybe they’d just not wanted to leave the body there.

Asric reached out one trembling hand to the blanket, and pulled it back, finding himself face to face with a very dead, but - thank the _Light_ \- very unfamiliar draenei. In the darkness he couldn’t see the face very well, but the crest was all wrong, and this one had those facial tendrils that Jadaar curiously lacked - and actually, this might be that unfortunate pilgrim Asric had seen the arakkoa cut down. And as sad as that was for whoever would mourn this draenei, surely it was a good sign that Jadaar was not in the room with him? What Asric knew of draenei death rites could fit in a thimble, but he knew enough about humans that he doubted the ones running the inn would have agreed to giving two corpses their own separate rooms. It seemed odd that they’d rented out a room for a dead draenei at all, but perhaps business was slow, or maybe he’d still been alive when they’d brought him in.

In which case it was still possible a similar fate had befallen Jadaar, but Asric didn’t have time to dwell on those thoughts; he needed to hurry if he wanted to look through the other rooms before the invisibility potion wore off. He pulled the blanket back over the dead draenei’s head and headed for the door, which turned out to be locked. Unless the fellow on the bed had locked himself in and thoughtfully covered himself before dying, the key wouldn’t be anywhere in the room, and as Asric had no lockpicks with him, he had no choice but to leave the same way he’d entered.

The next window over had a tighter latch and took a little more effort to open. Asric could feel the invisibility beginning to wear off and in his hurry to get in wasn’t as silent as he should have been, but fortunately it didn’t seem like anyone heard him. This window led to a room much like the first one, again with a motionless figure on the only bed, but this one was at least curled up on its side - was that the outline of a tail under the blanket? - and Asric thought he could see the subtle but steady rise and fall of breathing. He crept closer with light steps, but couldn’t quite keep his breathing even as he prepared to once again check.

Just as Asric’s fingertips brushed the edge of the blanket, the figure leapt into action. Asric recoiled, but too late. An outstretched hand caught him by the front of his shirt and before he knew it, he was pinned down on the bed.

 _Damn it_ , was the foremost thought in Asric’s mind as fingers closed around his neck, firm, but not squeezing, _how am I going to talk myself out of this?_

“There had better be a good explanation for this intrusion,” came the growled demand from the room’s occupant. “Start talking.”

Asric knew that voice - even in its current low and threatening tone - and he knew that lone glowing eye staring down at him. He sighed in relief, and whispered under his breath a short prayer of thanks in Thalassian.

To Jadaar, he said: “I never would have thought I’d be this happy to be threatened with strangulation.” And, because he couldn’t help himself, added: “Though I should tell you, you don’t sound half as scary as you probably think you do.”

It was true, too. Asric had been at the receiving end of quite a few threats in his time. Compared to some of those, this one didn’t even rate.

Jadaar seemed to hesitate. “Asric?”

Jadaar released him and sat up, eye so wide it appeared almost perfectly round in the darkness. Asric put on his best cocky grin, though he suspected the effect was somewhat ruined by the dark and the invisibility spell that had not yet entirely worn off. “Why, who were you expecting?”

Instead of answering, Jadaar pulled him up and into a crushing hug, breathing out a few words of draenei as he did so. Asric thought he recognized the word for “brat” in there. When Jadaar switched to common, his voice sounded thick. “I thought for sure…” he trailed off, squeezing tighter for a moment, then let go and leaned past Asric to light a candle on the little stool that was serving as a bedside table.

The flickering flame of the candle lent everything a slightly unreal quality, and Asric was so startled by how strange Jadaar looked without his eyepatch and with his hair unbraided and cascading freely over his shoulders that for a second he thought that maybe he’d been mistaken and had the wrong room after all. Making the overall effect even more disconcerting was the expression on Jadaar’s face; there was something unusually open, even vulnerable about the furrow of his brow, the slight downward turn of his lips. Asric wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Uncomfortable with the situation, Asric looked down, breaking eye contact. Only then did he notice the bandages wrapped around Jadaar’s abdomen, and felt worry rise anew in his throat, constricting his breath. In his relief over finding Jadaar alive and well enough to grapple with unexpected nighttime intruders, he’d forgotten all about the injury the arakkoa had dealt, and as such the bandages were a jarring sight.

They were also unraveling.

Quite without thinking, Asric put a hand against Jadaar’s side, roughly where he believed the wound was - as if this would somehow improve the situation. Jadaar tensed slightly at the touch, but didn’t pull away.

Seeing no blood on the bandages or anywhere else, Asric slid his hand under the loose wraps, and felt around the shockingly warm skin - did draenei naturally run warmer than was the norm for sin’dorei, or did Jadaar have a hint of a fever? - until his fingers found the raised, jagged line of the closed wound. He exhaled heavily and withdrew his hand.

“It’s healed,” he breathed, allowing himself to fall back onto the mattress. “You’re okay, it’s healed.”

“Closed isn’t the same thing as healed,” grumbled Jadaar, placing a protective hand over the fresh scar. “It’s still sore, so I will thank you not to poke at it.”

That sounded more like the Jadaar Asric knew. This, too, was a relief. As Jadaar busied himself with removing the useless bandages, Asric took the opportunity to take a better look at him, and to spare a thought for the emotional place in which he had found himself.

All his life, Asric had considered attractiveness to be defined by litheness of body and smoothness of skin; by softness of voice and demeanor, and the particular kind of elegance that was seldom found outside of the people of Quel’Thalas. If someone had told him just a decade ago that he would one day look at someone who failed to meet any of those criteria and see perfection, he would have laughed and laughed until he passed out from lack of breath.

But here was Jadaar now - pompous, bullheaded Jadaar, who had more scars on his severe face than he had eyes, who was half again Asric’s height and easily twice as wide, and possessed of all the grace of a three-legged elekk - and Asric did not feel like laughing at all. He swallowed and averted his eyes once more, suddenly feeling like the biggest fool.

“I’m wasting both of our times here, aren’t I?”

Jadaar’s head snapped up. “What are you talking about?”

Asric sighed. “In my head, I pictured this as some sort of a daring rescue - and please, don’t ask me why. There’s no logical reason why the Alliance should be keeping you against your will.” Asric nodded towards the door. “And I can see they’re not. The key is in the lock, and you’re almost completely healed. You could leave, but you don’t want to.”

“Asric…”

He turned to look Jadaar in the eye. “You had a comfortable out, and I’ve made it awkward.”

For a moment, Jadaar just stared at him, incredulous. Then his face hardened into something more familiar - frustration, maybe even anger - and he harrumphed. “‘Comfortable’ is not the word I would use,” he said. “Try ‘devastating’.”

“Why, what happened?”

“‘What happened’?” Jadaar repeated. “What happened was that I took a blow to the head and woke up several hours later in an unfamiliar place, to the news that my -” here, he hesitated, looking for the right words “ _traveling companion_ was last seen in the claws of a retreating arakkoa! What part of that sounds ‘comfortable’ to you?”

Jadaar’s outburst threw Asric for a loop, and he was still trying to think of a response - and decide whether or not he should take offense at that particular choice of words over all the other possibilities - when Jadaar’s shoulders sagged unexpectedly, the fight draining from him in a most uncharacteristic way.

“I’ve had too many people I cared about die on me already,” Jadaar said softly, and the look he gave Asric was almost pleading.

A more collected, less confrontational individual would have been moved by what that statement implied. Asric, however, was incensed.

"Do you think I haven’t? How do you suppose I felt, watching that thing tear into you?” It was something of an achievement on his part to remain mindful of their surroundings and not raise his voice. “After being told not to act, no less!”

“I never told you to -”

“You stopped me when I went to get my dagger!”

“That was because at the time it looked like the arakkoa was only interested in the cart! I saw no reason to aggravate it needlessly!”

“Oh, and I suppose your mace was just so much less threatening than my knife would have been.”

Jadaar, who had leaned closer when the argument had begun to grow more heated, suddenly pulled back with a huff, and rubbed the ridges on his nose with his thumb. “Look,” he finally said, trying for a calmer tone, “The mace was hardly inconspicuous from the start, and neither was I. I was bigger than anyone else there, and the only one wearing obvious armour. The arakkoa was never going to see _me_ as anything but a potential threat. _You_ on the other hand, appear small and scrawny in comparison.”

Asric bristled. “You know damn well I -”

“Yes, _I_ know, but the arakkoa wouldn’t have, not at a glance, and that was the point,” Jadaar hissed. “And did that not work in your favour, in the end? Didn’t being overlooked allow you to take the arakkoa by surprise after it attacked me?”

“How do you even - yes, I suppose it did,” Asric said, and despite the fact that in admitting Jadaar’s point he had essentially lost the argument, he held Jadaar’s gaze defiantly, daring him to gloat.

Jadaar didn’t gloat. All he did was shift awkwardly and clear his throat. “In fairness,” he said, managing somehow to give off the impression of speaking through clenched teeth without actually doing so, “I may still have been a touch overprotective. I will try to work on that in the future.”

“In the future?” Asric said, his indignation forgotten. “Then... you still want to go to Auchindoun with me?”

“It doesn’t have to be Auchindoun,” said Jadaar. “I think it’s high time I asked about what you wanted.”

What Asric wanted? When was the last time anyone had asked Asric that in earnest, without an underlying implication that he was an irritant who shouldn’t be wanting anything, and who would be doing everyone present a favour if he would just go away without further delay? Asric couldn’t even remember.

And oh, but he wanted a lot of things. He always did. Right now he wanted a drink, a warm meal and an equally warm bed. He wanted a place to call home and an end to the perpetual war and misery that had been the norm for so long he no longer remembered what real peace felt like, and to share all of the aforementioned things with the man in front of him. But most of all he wanted to be worth what Jadaar was willing to walk away from here, to be deserving of that trust.

He needed to come clean.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, standing up and taking a few steps away from the bed. A little distance seemed like a good idea right then. Just in case.

“Yes?” Jadaar looked expectant, as if he thought he knew what Asric was going to say.

“I…” Asric began, swallowed, and tried again. “What happened in Shattrath… it was my fault.”

Whatever Jadaar had expected him to say, clearly that wasn’t it. His brow furrowed in puzzlement, but he remained silent. Asric forced himself to continue, even though his stomach felt like he’d swallowed a lump of ice.

“There was a man - a human. I'd never seen him before or since, but he came to me with an offer to pay for certain sensitive details about the investigation. I didn't know who he was or how he was connected to the case, nor did I care; I just took the money.” He glanced at Jadaar, who had gone still as stone. It was unnerving. To calm himself down, Asric began to pace, keeping his eyes on his feet as he talked.

“All I can say in my defense is that I thought there would be no real harm in it. So one charlatan would go free, what did it matter, in a city like Shattrath? I certainly didn’t expect anyone to be fired over something so minor!” He stopped in front of the window, unable to turn around and face Jadaar. “I’m sorry. For everything I’ve put you through.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” Jadaar asked. His voice was completely even, and Asric couldn’t tell if it was serene fury, or if Jadaar was still processing the information and the reaction would follow later. He wasn’t sure which option he would prefer.

“I’ve kept quiet too long already,” Asric said. “Cowardice. That’s all that was. But I can’t justify taking you away from what could be a fresh start without letting you know exactly who you’d be going with.”

“I see,” said Jadaar. “Then I thank you for your honesty, but…”

Asric squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for what he knew would come next, grateful that Jadaar couldn’t see his face right then.

“I already knew.”

Asric whipped around. “You _what_?”

“I figured it out a long time ago.” Jadaar raised his eyebrows pointedly. “I did use to solve crimes for a living. Did you think I’d never put two and two together?”

“But no one could have told you anything. There was no evidence.” Asric could feel panic begin to rise like bile in his throat. Out of all the possible outcomes, this was not one he had anticipated; he had no clue how to handle it. “You had nothing to go on!”

“I had you,” said Jadaar. “And as it turned out, that’s all I really needed. I realized even before we left Shattrath that the evidence couldn’t have been stolen without any inside help, and you and I were the only people in the position to give that help.”

“So why didn’t you turn me in then? You might’ve kept your job.”

“You remember what the political climate in the city was like. I couldn’t go around accusing a Scryer of misconduct without any concrete evidence. The Aldor would have had a field day.” Jadaar rubbed at the bridge of his nose again. “And besides, there was the possibility that you hadn’t done it intentionally - or even knowingly. Maybe you had simply been careless, or you’d gotten drunk in the wrong company and said things you shouldn’t have.”

Asric suppressed the urge to huddle into himself. “I didn’t, though.” It would have been nice to be able to say it had all been accidental, that he hadn’t meant to sabotage the investigation, but it wouldn’t have been true and right now it was very important that he be completely truthful. For once in his life.

Jadaar appeared unperturbed. “It’s a part of the reason why I came to Dalaran with you,” he said. “I thought I might be able to get you to open up about what had really happened, if only for my own peace of mind. But you turned out to be extremely good at keeping your secrets, and alcohol only made you more guarded, not less.” His shoulders fell, like he was reliving the disappointment afresh. “I knew then that no one could have gotten any information out of you unless you volunteered it.”

“If you knew, why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“What was there to do? I still had no concrete evidence - and besides, we were far outside the Sha’tar’s jurisdiction.”

By now Asric was reasonably sure there was actual bile trying to climb up his throat. “So all this time - all this time you’ve just been building your case?” He would have been happier not knowing that. It had been bad enough to know that his actions had ruined his companion’s life, but to now find out that Jadaar had only been tolerating his company in the hopes of …

“That’s not it at all!” Jadaar said, his insistent tone interrupting Asric’s steady descent into crushing guilt. “We were still in Dalaran when I started to feel like it didn’t really matter anymore. There was no changing what had happened, and I reasoned you probably hadn’t expected the consequences to be so severe -”

Asric let out a mirthless laugh. “Who could have? It still doesn’t make any sense!”

“- and as said consequences had applied to you as well, I began to think that perhaps that was punishment enough.”

“I used to think being stuck with you was worse than I deserved,” Asric said, trying a cautious smile.

Jadaar didn’t quite smile back, but his expression softened. “When we left for the Argent Tournament, I knew I could be rid of you, if I wanted to. I could have joined the ranks of the Argent Crusade, made a fresh start, as you say.” Here, he did smile, though it was tinged with something like melancholy. “You can imagine my surprise when I realized I didn’t want to.”

Asric believed he knew the feeling. He himself had been astonished when he’d first come to the realization that he preferred the ornery draenei’s company to the alternatives available to him.

“I decided then that if I were to stay, I would have to forgive you. and if I couldn’t forgive, then I couldn’t stay. Weighed against that alternative, and taking into account that you hadn’t been all that bad after Shattrath, forgiveness came pretty easily.”

“Just like that?”

Jadaar gave him a look. “Would you have preferred me to still be holding a grudge?”

 _Maybe_ , thought Asric, but he did not say so. Instead, he shook his head. “So what happens now?”

“I see no reason to change the original plan,” said Jadaar. “We’ll go to Auchindoun. Unless you had something different in mind?”

“No, Auchindoun is fine.” It was better than fine, and more than he deserved.

Jadaar swung his legs off the bed and - carefully, still mindful of his injury - stood up. “You need to leave before it gets light, and find a place to spend the night. I’ll meet you in the morning on the road outside this fort. Does that sound acceptable?”

Asric nodded slowly, and Jadaar made his way to the foot of the bed, where his armor and other belongings lay in a haphazard pile. He bent down to rifle through the pile until he produced a small coin purse.

“I expect you could use a little more money?”

Asric didn’t answer. He still couldn’t believe it could really be this easy. He wasn’t sure he deserved easy - in fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he didn’t. By all rights, Jadaar should have been furious with him. Perhaps he _was_. Perhaps this was all just an act to get rid of him without undue fuss. Asric clenched his hands into fists and stared down at his feet.

“Listen, Jadaar, if you’re planning to not show up tomorrow, I’d rather know now,” he said quietly. Better to hear it now. Better to make a clean break of it.

Wordlessly, Jadaar’s straightened up and strode over. He grabbed Asric’s hand by the wrist, turned it palm up, and pressed the purse into it. Then, still holding on to Asric’s wrist with one hand, he lifted the other to cup Asric’s face and tilt it up.

It was not so much a kiss as it was a light brushing of lips, but it almost made Asric drop the money in his hand. As soon as his brain had caught up to what was happening, Asric leaned forward, demanding more. Jadaar eagerly complied, pulling Asric flush against himself. Jadaar’s mouth was surprisingly soft and his touch eager in a way it had never been before, and it was only through an enormous exertion of willpower that Asric managed to keep himself from getting carried away.

Entirely too soon, Jadaar pulled away, leaving Asric feeling strangely off balance.

“If I am not there by noon,” said Jadaar, “you have my permission to come looking for me.”

“Believe me,” breathed Asric, “there is no way you’re getting rid of me after _that_.”

Jadaar snorted, but could not hide his smile. He gave Asric a gentle nudge towards the window, and Asric tied the purse securely onto his belt, took a swig of his invisibility potion, and bidding Jadaar good night, slipped out the way he had come.

Fort Wrynn did not so much as stir as Asric made his way back around the tents and over the hills, nor did Vol’jin’s Pride take any particular notice of his entrance some twenty minutes later, once more fully visible and looking for all the world like a foolhardy adventurer returning from some completely innocuous nighttime errand.

The tauren innkeeper was herself fast asleep on a mat by the door when Asric entered the inn, and though she didn’t seem too pleased to be pestered for a bed at such a late hour, she dutifully took his payment and pointed him to a vacant alcove padded with hay and furs - clearly privacy was seen as an unnecessary frivolity in orcish inn design - before turning on her side and going right back to sleep.

Asric envied her; he had a much harder time of getting to sleep that night. Never mind that the straw and furs were only barely more comfortable than bare ground, or the fact that he could hear the snores of every single one of the inn’s residents - his mind was racing, feverishly going over everything that had happened during the past 24 hours and trying to convince himself that he had imagined none of it. A small, insistent part of him was still trying to convince the rest of him that Jadaar was even now preparing to disappear, making sure that this time, Asric would have no trail to follow. But he knew perfectly well that that was just his own insecurity talking, and it was wrong. The former peacekeeper was as good as his word; of this Asric had no doubt. Jadaar would be there.

He must have drifted off eventually, because when he opened his eyes, it was light and the inn was abustle with people. Asric took his time getting up, waiting until the activity had died down a little before approaching the innkeeper for a bite to eat. She either did not recognize Asric as the same person who had disturbed her sleep in the dead of the night, or was used enough to such things not to hold a grudge over it. In any case, she was nothing but friendly as she sold him a meal and sent him on his way.

Fed and as refreshed as he could expect to be after only a few hours of sleep, Asric left Vol’jin’s Pride in high spirits. He sauntered over to the point on the road where Fort Wrynn was only just in sight - he wouldn’t want to arouse any suspicion _now_ \- leaned against a tree, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After an hour and a few odd looks from passing travellers, he was beginning to think that perhaps they should have agreed on a more specific time than “in the morning, before noon”. Another half hour and he was beginning to worry. What if Jadaar had changed his mind? No, if he had he would have done Asric the courtesy of letting him know. Right? Unless of course something had happened. Something very bad, and -

No. That wasn’t a helpful train of thought. ‘If I’m not there by noon,’ Jadaar had said, and it was not even close to noon yet. Asric sat down, settling himself more comfortably against the tree. He closed his eyes and tried to steer his thoughts onto a less stressful track. He really hadn’t had enough sleep, and the late morning sun felt nice on the side of his face...

“It’s not very safe to sleep out here, you know.”

Asric jolted, sat up straight and looked blearily up at a familiar blue face. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he protested, but he could see the sun was noticeably higher in the sky than it had been before he’d closed his eyes. Not that he was about to admit that to Jadaar.

“No? Then how did you not hear my approach?” asked Jadaar as he held out a hand towards Asric.

“I was… distracted,” Asric said, taking the hand and allowing Jadaar to pull him up. “And bored out of my mind. What took you so long?”

“My benefactors wouldn’t allow me to leave until a healer had pronounced me fit to travel.” Jadaar said simply, then gestured down the road. “Are you ready to go?”

“Just a moment,” said Asric, dusting himself off and stepping in close. He pressed his palms flat against Jadaar’s sides, pushed himself up onto the tips of his toes and craned his neck up, pleased when Jadaar took the hint and leaned down to kiss him. There was the confirmation he was looking for, the reaffirmation that he could really have this. When they broke apart, Asric couldn’t help but grin.

Jadaar, too, was smiling. “Now can we go?”

“Lead the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story works off of a similar premise to a comic I drew six months earlier: ( **[warning for major character death](http://mipeltaja-art.tumblr.com/post/121131270640/backup-plan-this-entire-thing-sprang-from-one-of)** ), though it goes in a very different direction.
> 
> I owe thanks to my friends **Fitzy** and **Simppeli** , for helping me with the early planning stages, and especially to the marvellous **Silverr** , who read through large chunks of the early draft and pointed out spots that needed working on.
> 
> Every named character (except for Rebecka and Rikhard) exists as an NPC in the game.
> 
> The art embedded in the third chapter was drawn by me, and can **[also be found on my art blog](http://mipeltaja-art.tumblr.com/post/136604544585/asric-and-jadaar-an-illustration-for-this-fic)** , along with a **[painting of Jadaar without his eyepatch](http://mipeltaja-art.tumblr.com/post/136604569110/a-better-look-at-jadaar-in-a-state-of-undress)**
> 
>  **A note about Asric's explanation of what went down in Shattrath** : I'm sure we all know of the line he would occasionally mutter to himself in Thalassian after the case against Griftah collapsed: _"That man didn't pay me enough to put up with this blowhard..."_ The general assumption, quite logically, is that Asric accepted a bribe for something that either directly or indirectly led to the evidence being lost. (I actually assumed for a good while that he was just referring to whoever hired him for the investigation, and that he spoke in a language Jadaar couldn't understand because it was an insult, not because it incriminated him, but that's beside the point I'm making.) However, I haven't seen much speculation anywhere about just who paid Asric off to save Griftah's business. Asric refers to "that man", which off course tells us that the briber was a man, but also seems to imply that he was an elf or a human - surely had it been Griftah himself, Asric would have referred to him as "that troll". I think the clue lies in the timing: Griftah's return to Shattrath was in patch 2.3, otherwise known as _The Gods of Zul'Aman_ , and when he returned, he offered the players the quest [Oooh, Shinies!](http://www.wowhead.com/quest=11130/oooh-shinies), a breadcrumb quest to lead the player to the new raid. You were to deliver a note to a male human NPC called Budd Nedreck, and if you read the note it revealed that you were not the first person Griftah had sent Budd's way. Put together, all evidence seems to point to Budd Nedreck as the person who bribed Asric. In hindsight it seems to me like the connection was meant to be pretty obvious, but the whole thing was just irrelevant enough that it kind of slipped under the radar for most if not all of us.


End file.
